Project for a Good Friend

A little ways back, my friend Dominic asked me to help him make a chess table for his new house. He priced out some tables in catalogs, but the nice ones he liked were well over $1000. Plus, he wanted the satisfaction of building one himself the way he wanted it. The plan was to make it almost entirely out of walnut, with an inlaid chess board made from alternating walnut & maple squares. Here's the finished product...

I've been meaning to take a few photos of this table for the last 2 years, but for those of you who know me well, I can be quite the procrastinator... The photos are from Dom's upstairs den, with some very nice chairs that I'm sure his wife Sue picked out :-) This was the first piece I made for someone else and have to admit that it's the one project I'm most proud of. Dom tells me that he & his family are pleased too.

If memory serves, it took us about a month to complete the construction, working mostly nights and weekends in my shop. The walnut was given to us by another friend, who also happens to be a professional woodworker. A very generous gesture indeed. We reverse-engineeredg the design of a similar table from a magazine, using a traditional shaker design. The table's legs are tapered on both inside edges and the stretchers have a bead detail along the bottom to dress them up a bit. The finish is 4 coats of a high-gloss Sutherland Welles polymerized tung oil. Dominic applied the finish himself. It left a very nice smooth finish but it took a little while to dry between coats.

Seeing this table again really has me motivated to get another project started. Any ideas?